Alumni in the Field

Robert is a Sustainability Subject Matter Expert and Program Manager at Google where he is focused on advancing Google’s Circular Economy mission to maximize the reuse of finite resources across the company’s operations, products, and supply chains - and enable others to do the same.  While pursuing his MEM at Yale with specializations in both Industrial Ecology and Business & The Environment, he served as a two-time EDF Climate Corps fellow for both PepsiCo’s and Google’s Global Sustainability teams, and focused largely on circular economy solutions for packaging waste, recycling efficiency, and composting strategy.  At Yale, Robert contributed to several books as a research assistant for professor Dan Esty, provided waste management consultancy for companies like Unilever, Seventh Generation, and Daily Dump, and led the Pathways in Business and the Environment program at CBEY.  Robert is a Fulbright Scholar, previously served as the Chief of Staff for Sherwood Design Engineers, holds a BA in Environmental Policy & Sociology from Pitzer College, and is an avid biker & bike mechanic.

As chief of the Minerals Intelligence Research Section at the National Minerals Information Center, Dr. Nassar and his research team quantify the global stocks and flows of nonfuel mineral commodities at each stage of their life cycle, analyze trends and examine concerns regarding foreign mineral dependencies, develop supply and demand scenarios, and assess the mineral commodity supply risk to the U.S. economy and national security. Dr. Nassar received his Ph.D. from Yale University where he worked on the development and application of a methodology for assessing critical minerals. He has continued that work as a leading member of the U.S. National Science and Technology Council’s Critical Minerals Subcommittee. He also serves as a member of the Executive Committee for the Council of Senior Science Advisors at U.S. Geological Survey and has been on the advisory board of various international research projects. In 2019, he was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers–the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. Government to outstanding scientists and engineers who are beginning their independent research careers. His research has been published in several high-profile journals and highlighted in major media outlets. He has also been called upon to testify before the U.S. Senate, brief senior U.S. government officials, and invited to give keynote addresses and present his research at significant venues including The National Academies, the European Commission, and the World Bank. Previously, Dr. Nassar worked as a consultant and as a process development engineer in the semiconductors and data storage industries where he was the recipient of three trade secrets. He also holds a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Minnesota, an MBA in sustainable global enterprise from Cornell University, as well as two master’s degrees from Yale University.

Frenzi supports Metabolic Institute as a sustainability researcher and industrial ecologist in various consortium-based pan-European research projects centred around the circular economy, urban regeneration and industrial heritage. Trained as an interdisciplinary systems thinker, she supports cities regions, and other organizations to analyse urban sustainability issues and find integrated solutions. 

Before joining Metabolic, Frenzi studied industrial ecology, social-ecological systems and environmental sciences in the US, Germany and Canada.  Frenzi holds a Masters in Environmental Management from Yale School of the Environment and a Bachelors in Liberal Arts and Sciences from Freiburg University, Germany.

Charissa Rujanavech (MEM ’13) is a Principal for the Circular Economy at Amazon, Inc. where she leads the development of circularity strategies and unlocking barriers to material flows through technology innovation with a specific focus on packaging materials across all Amazon business units. Prior to Amazon, Charissa was the Director of Technology at an agricultural startup based in Maui, Hawaii and started the Recycling Innovation program at Apple where she was the creator of their flagship automated disassembly recycling systems, Liam and Daisy. While at Yale, Charissa interned on Patagonia’s Environmental Initiatives team and Nike’s Sustainable Product R&D team. She was an editorial assistant at the Journal of Industrial Ecology, co-led the Industrial Ecology Student Interest Group (SIG) and was a Teaching Fellow for the Life Cycle Assessment course. She currently resides on Maui where she is living out her island surfing and farming dreams in between finding ways to eliminate waste and reuse waste as a resource at the global scale.

Dr. Lin Shi (MEM ’14) is a Sustainability Scientist at Amazon Lab126, where she works on life cycle assessment and decarbonization strategies across Amazon Lab126’s device and services portfolio. Lin holds a PhD degree from the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources at Stanford University where she studied supply chain sustainability in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry for her dissertation. Prior to her PhD, she has worked on research and implementation of electronics life cycle assessment, building energy efficiency improvement, and organizational carbon footprint reduction with various organizations including Apple and the Boston Medical Center. At Yale, she served as a research assistant at the Center of Industrial Ecology under Professor Marian Chertow and conducted analysis of by-products, energy and heat sharing of paper and sugar manufacturing facilities. She also co-led the Energy Club and was a student chapter board member for the International Society for Industrial Ecology. Her time at CIE has cultivated her interest in sustainability science and has been instrumental to her career and later education.